Some liberty-lovers warned us of the down side. In the hands of The State, it’s difficult to assure they’ll be used properly when it favors the public, but you can almost be assured they’ll be used or abused in such a way that favors The State and its bureaucrats.

We’ve already seen several incidents where clueless cops don’t know how to operate the equipment and exposed their own malfeasance.

Odd that Melanie seems to think rights reside in a particular DNA configuration rather than in e.g. sapience (when she’s not thinking that rights are “granted”). I can see the argument vis a vis machines, but if sapient aliens show up, why would they not be “persons” in the same way that a member of species homo sapiens? Do current humans with significant amounts of Neanderthal DNA also have fewer rights than others?

I’ve been all over the map on rights, but my current view is that they come from the ability to observe them, as a society. So if you and I can agree not to aggress against each other, and we make it a practice to uphold this commitment, we can discuss when we feel that commitment has been violated. In theory, this accord could be extended to any species.

I suppose it breaks down if any species is inclined to disregard rights and have the power to do so, which seems to be the case, in many cultures, between humans and domesticated animals. In that and similar environments, I’d say how one treats “lower forms of life” is an indicator of that person’s character. A certain level of “humanity” is to be expected, but I wouldn’t take it to the level that PETA takes it (not even close.)

Yes, my sister just had her ancestry DNA testing done, and besides finding out that “we are the whitest people on the planet”, we are apparently 78% Neanderthal (don’t ask me for details, I don’t have them), which she thinks explains why our family has such problems communicating…

On the November 22 show, Mike said that the reason for some sort of cryptocurrency behavior was because of Gresham’s Law.

Colloquially stated as “The bad money drives out the good,” Gresham’s Law applies only to money of the same face value. The classic example of this is clipped coins of the same face value. The coin that is clipped gets spent, and the coin that is not clipped gets kept.

Another example is gold and silver certificates, and today’s FRNs. Gold and silver certificates were, per the writing on them, good for the face value in gold or silver. When they stopped printing these and issued FRNs backed by the “faith and credit of the US government,” people hoarded them.

Another example is pre-1964 dimes and quarters, which were 90% silver. People hoarded those when the coins without any silver came out.

my sister just had her ancestry DNA testing done, and besides finding out that “we are the whitest people on the planet”, we are apparently 78% Neanderthal (don’t ask me for details, I don’t have them), which she thinks explains why our family has such problems communicating

It’s probably around 2.5% Neanderthal DNA. 78 is the percentile rank. She has more than 78% of the general population.

Mine tested at a little over 3%, putting me in the 97% percentile range.

Modern humans are a little more Neanderthal than we thought. A detailed genetic analysis of a Neanderthal who lived about 52,000 years ago suggests our extinct evolutionary cousins still influence our risk of having a heart attack, developing an...